Ritual of Radiance: External Love vs Self Love

External love feels exciting. Self love feels regulating.

Understanding the difference may be one of the most important emotional distinctions we ever learn.

In a world that teaches us to look outward for validation, connection, and safety, it’s easy to confuse intensity with intimacy, and attention with love. But there is a gentle truth beneath all of it:

We often seek love to feel safe because safety is what allows love to be real.

This is the heart of the Ritual of Radiance.

Not the kind of radiance that performs or proves.
But the kind that regulates, softens, and returns you to yourself.

External Love: The Energy of Excitement

External love is the love we receive from others — partners, friends, family, audiences, communities. It’s magnetic. It’s stimulating and activates our nervous system.

External love often feels like:

• Butterflies
• Anticipation
• Validation
• Being chosen
• Feeling seen through someone else’s eyes

There is nothing wrong with external love. It’s beautiful and natural. It’s part of how we bond, grow, and mirror each other.

But external love is inherently unstable — because it lives outside of our control.

It depends on:

• Someone else’s capacity
• Someone else’s availability
• Someone else’s nervous system
• Someone else’s story, wounds, timing, and evolution

Which means external love, no matter how genuine, cannot be the foundation of safety.

It can be a gift BUT it cannot be the source.

Self Love: The Energy of Regulation

Self love doesn’t feel like fireworks. It feels like homeostasis.

It feels like:

• A settled nervous system
• Emotional steadiness
• Self-trust
• Inner warmth
• The absence of urgency

Self love is not about hype or affirmations. It is about regulation — the ability to stay with yourself without abandoning your body, your feelings, or your truth.

Self love is what allows you to:

• Receive love without chasing it
• Set boundaries without guilt
• Be alone without feeling empty
• Be connected without losing yourself

This is why self love often feels quieter than external love. 

It’s not exciting but it’s safe.

And safety is what allows love to become real, sustainable, and embodied — instead of addictive or performative.

Why We Chase Love Instead of Safety

Most of us were never taught how to regulate ourselves emotionally.

So we learn to regulate through:

• Relationships
• Attention
• Approval
• Being wanted
• Being needed

In other words, we outsource our nervous systems.

We don’t actually want love.
We want the feeling that love gives us:

• Relief
• Belonging
• Worthiness
• Calm
• Security

But here’s the quiet revelation:

The feeling you are seeking through love is a state, not a person.

And any state can be generated internally once the body learns how to access it. This is where ritual replaces seeking.

The Ritual of Radiance: “Return to Source”

This is a simple embodiment practice you can return to anytime you feel yourself craving external validation, connection, or reassurance.

Not to suppress desire — but to reclaim your source.

Step 1: Recall a Moment of Love

Bring to mind a moment when you felt deeply loved. Not imagined — real. Felt. Remembered.

It could be:

• A partner’s embrace
• A child resting on your chest
• A friend’s words
• A moment of being seen creatively or spiritually

Let the memory become sensory. Connect your senses to the memory.

Step 2: Locate It in the Body

Now notice: where do you feel that love in your body?

Is it in your:

• Chest?
• Belly?
• Throat?
• Face?
• Shoulders?

There is always a physical location.

Step 3: Place Your Hand There

Gently place your hand on that spot. 

Breathe into it.
Not to remember the person — but to feel the state.

Step 4: Generate It Internally

Here’s the shift:

Let yourself realize that the feeling is not coming from the memory.
The memory just activated something already inside you.

You are now generating the feeling from within your own nervous system.

This is self love in its most embodied form.

Not conceptual.
Not motivational.
Not performative.

But Regulated. Present. Alive.

External Love Meets Self Love

When self love becomes the baseline, something profound happens:

External love stops feeling like survival.
It starts feeling like resonance.

You no longer seek love to feel whole.
You share love because you already are.

You no longer attach to attention.
You allow connection to flow.

You no longer abandon yourself to be chosen.
You choose yourself and allow others to meet you there.

This is the difference between:

• Chemistry and coherence
• Excitement and safety
• Seeking and receiving

The Real Radiance

Radiance is NOT how loved you are by others.

Radiance is how safe you are within yourself.

It’s your nervous system saying:
“I am here. I am held. I am enough in this moment.”

From that place:

• Love becomes real
• Desire becomes clean
• Boundaries become natural
• And connection becomes sacred instead of scarce

This is the ritual of radiance - Not finding love but returning to the source of it.